


It's Personal

by weepingnaiad



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Phil Coulson SHIELD recruiter, Phil Coulson does not need backup, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/pseuds/weepingnaiad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trip and Skye have Coulson's back, even when he doesn't need (or particularly <i>want</i>) them to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Personal

**Author's Note:**

> **Beta:** My dear hitlikehammers gave this a quick read through. Thank you, darlin'! Of course, I can't help but fiddle afterwards, so any mistakes are all on me.
> 
> **A/N:** Inspired by the sneak peek and the teasers ABC's been releasing.

"I still can't believe I let you talk me into this," Trip said as he watched the restaurant Coulson had entered.

Skye snorted, her attention focused on her laptop. "No talking required. You were just as concerned as I was about this new habit of AC going off on his lonesome."

"Coulson is the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., doesn't that make it DC now?" Trip glanced over at Skye, grinning at her expression.

"DC sounds stupid," she said, then her smile turned mischievous. "Besides, I'm saving that for the perfect moment."

"And what would that be?"

"I haven't decided if it's when some leather-daddy with great arms catches AC's eye or--"

"Wait, what?" Trip spluttered, trying hard not to laugh at the image Skye's words conjured.

Skye grinned, eyes sparkling. She was such trouble. "I've paid attention and I'm pretty sure AC runs AC _and_ DC, if you get my drift."

Trip groaned. "Now you sound like those girls on the Avengers message boards." He was still smiling as he added, "Not every guy-guy friendship is homoerotic, Skye." He reached over and tugged her hair. "Just like guy-gal friendships can be platonic."

"I know that. I never did believe all that about the Howling Commandos, so don't get your shorts in a bunch," she said. "I'm talking _observed_ behaviors. AC appreciates a well-formed backside on either gender."

"Can we really not do this?" he asked. "I feel weird discussing Coulson's sexuality."

Skye put up her hands. "Fine. Whatever. The other option was an entrance ala Tony Stark… AC/DC blasting away."

Trip chuckled as he finally caught up with Skye's thought processes again. "Now that one I can get behind."

Skye whistled.

Trip turned his head to see Coulson and a very attractive woman leave the restaurant and then immediately get into Lola, with Coulson playing gentleman and holding her door.

"Who is that?” Trip asked, starting the car to follow. "I think she's wearing an SI badge."

"I'm working on it. This ain't no shady back-alley deal."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Trip swerved the car to fit behind a large SUV just as Coulson glanced over his shoulder.

"Hey! Stark's security is the best!" she said, defensive. "And I never considered checking them anyway." She paused. "I figured he was meeting up with an asset who'd gone off-grid, not hooking up."

Trip glanced at her as Lola slid through the light, leaving Trip few options to follow inconspicuously. "Hooking up? Is that what you think Coulson's doing?"

They circled a couple of blocks looking for Lola, catching a lucky break when he found the red corvette stopped in front of a flower shop. Trip pulled over behind a delivery van to wait. "Of course not!" Skye snapped. "AC's had me going through all the S.H.I.E.L.D. data Romanoff released. He's been very interested in agents and assets that vanished after the Battle of New York. I assumed--"

Her words were cut off by a knock on her window.

Skye rolled the window down looking remarkably composed in the face of Coulson's displeasure. "Skye? Agent Triplett? Why are you following me? I was under the impression that I left orders _not_ to be followed."

"We had your back, AC. Didn't want anything to happen to you," Skye blurted out.

"Oh, for fuck's--" he started, then sighed.

"Go back to base. I will check in when my meeting's done."

"But--"

Coulson held up a hand. "No, Skye. I am perfectly safe with Ms. Hartley, but neither of you will be if I inform May--"

"Nope!" Skye interrupted.

"We understand, sir. Skye was worried and I allowed her concern to influence my decision-making."

Coulson gave that little smirk that wasn't exactly a smile. "You best be careful, Agent Triplett. It wouldn't do for you to be so easily compromised by a pretty face."

"Hey!" Skye argued. "I had data!"

Coulson stepped away from the car and Trip turned to clear himself to merge into traffic.

"I had facts! Reasons!" Skye shouted out the window.

"Oh, man, that could have gone better," Trip said. But Skye seemed unfazed. "We better get back to base before May gets wind of this."

"We have plenty of time. My old stomping grounds are near here. C'mon, Trip, let me show you around."

"Oh, hell no! I'm in enough trouble already!"

Skye crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. "Spoilsport."

"Damn straight," Trip replied.

Before Trip could navigate out of the gentrified neighborhood and back onto the freeway, Skye nudged him.

"What?" He tried not to sound annoyed.

"Take a look," Skye said, turning her laptop screen toward Trip.

"Skye, I'm _driving._ " He definitely sounded irritated then.

She pointed ahead. "Just pull over up there. I think you should see who _Ms._ Hartley is."

Trip didn't sigh. He didn't argue. He'd already learned it did no good to argue with Skye.

"Okay. Show me."

As he skimmed the various documents in multiple tabs, he didn't see anything that came as a surprise. "So?" he asked.

"She's ex-S.H.I.E.L.D.," Skye said, intent and eager, as if this was some big mystery she'd solved.

Trip just looked up at her, one eyebrow raised in question. "Aren't we all?"

"No. Don't you see? She was ex- before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell."

Trip pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. "I know Coulson might make it seem otherwise, but people _do_ leave S.H.I.E.L.D. and go on with their lives. It's not unheard of."

"I _know_ that. I'm just pointing out that she wouldn't have been an active agent so she wasn't in the records I sent AC."

"And I care why?"

Skye huffed out a breath and rolled her eyes. "AC contacted her, so they _knew_ each other. Probably worked together."

"Skye," Trip began, his voice carefully modulated. "Director Coulson was recruited by Nick Fury straight out of high school. That translates to him being with the agency for at least twenty-five year before S.H.I.E.L.D. imploded. Don't you think it'd be a reasonable assumption that he would have worked with a ton of ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents during all that time?"

"I'm just saying she must be someone that he trusts is all." Skye sounded petulant as she typed on the keyboard.

For a brief moment, Trip was hit by a tidal wave of loneliness, of an ache for a team filled with reliable, back-slapping agents, that he could count on to have his six. The feeling passed quickly as he glanced at Skye's bowed head. He had a team that was more family than anything else, now, and none of them would think twice about laying their lives down for each other. He thought he'd had that before, but it'd all been a lie. Now it was truth. They weren't perfect, and they bickered more like a family than a battle-hardened team, but that just made Trip smile in the face of Skye's pout.

He nudged her arm. "Go ahead. Give me your pet theory. I'm listening."

Skye looked up, eyes wide, smile sheepish. "Well, I had been going down the ex-lovers route… you _did_ notice his hand on her back, right?"

Before Trip nodded, Skye was carrying on in her usual mode. "But I was wrong. Sooooo wrong." She turned the screen toward Trip again. He started reading, but Skye explained it immediately. "She was Hand's ex."

And there it was in black and white: Form HR-D22, subsection B, signed by both Isabelle Hartley, level four field agent, and Victoria Hand, level six operations officer.

"They lived together, were each other's… well, _everything,_ according to these HR forms."

"I thought you said 'ex'," Trip prompted.

Skye frowned, then clicked to another tab. "Looks like they split in April of 2012." She sounded sad. Only Skye could care so quickly about someone she didn't know. "Right before New York. Agent Hartley left S.H.I.E.L.D. then, too."

"Huh," Trip said, at a loss for words.

"Yeah. Hand just didn't seem like the touchy-feely kind," Skye replied. "Probably why they broke up."

"You can't know that," Trip chided. "All this…" he waved at the forms on her screen. "All we saw of who Agent Hand was… that was work, was during the implosion of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not exactly the best time to judge someone. And these forms. They don't tell us anything. We didn't know Agent Hand."

Skye wanted to argue and Trip understood because he'd heard about Hand's treatment of Skye. "But AC must have known Agent Hartley."

"I already agreed that's no surprise." Trip was done with this conversation. It felt too much like voyeurism, like picking over the bones of the dead.

"Sorry. I just… could you work with her?"

"Who?"

"Hartley," Skye said, her patience waning, too.

Trip met Skye's gaze. "If that's what Coulson tells me to do, I'll do it." He tugged on Skye's hair once again. "You know that, right? I trust Coulson and I'll go where he tells me to."

Skye swallowed, glancing out the window before meeting Trip's eyes. "Yeah. I know. Thanks."

"So what's got you so jittery?"

"It's just… all these people. Agents, assets, operatives, researchers, even the janitors… they believed in S.H.I.E.L.D. and paid the price for it." She bit her lip. "I know S.H.I.E.L.D. was important, but how do we rebuild it? Can we? _Should_ we?"

"I'm no philosopher, so I don't bother with the big questions. But I'll tell you something. My granddad believed in the SSR and, later, S.H.I.E.L.D.. He hasn't steered me wrong yet, so I'm still going to listen to him because I think we need S.H.I.E.L.D. now, more than ever."

Skye looked so conflicted, so lost and yet a part of her was clinging like his words were a lifeline. She still wore that weary, sad distance, an aloofness that she'd had about her ever since Coulson rescued her from Ward. Trip wanted to reassure her.

"I trust Coulson," he repeated. "He's seen what can happen; lived it; up close and personal. I think out of anyone, he'll do it right."

"I believe in AC, too," Skye murmured, and her shoulders dropped a bit.

Trip's words weren't enough — it would take a long time to heal after Ward's betrayal — but it was a start. "Then we best get our asses back to base before him or May'll have them in a sling."

"Copy that," Skye said, then gave Trip a fist bump and a weak smile.

"We're the only ones that can go after Hydra," he said.

"Because we know how they think?" Skye asked as he merged onto the highway.

"Nope. Because, for us? It's _personal._ "

Skye grinned in answer, sharp and sly. And _that_ was a new look on her. A good one. Trip hoped she didn't lose more of herself in the days to come, though. They all were compromised, too close to the problem, and that could become an issue, if they let it. But there was no way they weren't seeing this through. And Trip was certain their ragtag bunch weren't the only ones that felt that way. 

Later, when Coulson returned to the base with Hartley, Trip grinned in greeting and stuck out his hand. "Welcome aboard, ma'am."

"Ma'am?" she snorted, eyes taking in how few of them there were. "This is fuckin' crazy, Coulson. You've got the Boy Scouts helping us out?"

Coulson straightened. "Don't underestimate this team. Everyone who did was put in their place."

She grinned. "I always knew you were a crazy S.O.B., Coul-- _Sir,_ " she corrected. "Should be _fun._ "

That wasn't exactly what Trip would’ve called it. 

But, in the end, it was.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Disclaimer:** These are Marvel and Whedon and ABC's characters used in the spirit of creative commons. I promise to return them with smiles on


End file.
